Wonder

By Anonymous, Newton, MA

Image Credit: Mary A., Fullerton, CA

Flowers never wilted. No one died. People used to not die. In my mind’s eye, as a child of five, life was an infinite coursing river that constantly flowed over the jagged rocks of the stream, and smoothed down their edges until they became glassy stones. I saw no reason for reason.

At what point in our lives does the firefly become but an insect? At what point in our lives do we stop dancing in the rain? At what point in our lives do we cease to envelop ourselves in the fall leaves, if only to hear them crunch under our soft touch? When do people begin to die? When do we reach that horizon where the wonder of being a child kisses the edges of adulthood? The sun sets ever so quickly and we fall into shades of black without ever noticing the faded golden hues that maybe passed us by. Our shoulders become heavy with boulders we never knew existed, and we feel like we missed it. That very short span of time in our lives when angels could fly. We were winged with white feathers that reached far across the open blue. Now our feet are planted to the ground. And people, they do die.

We begin our lives in a world where flowers never wilt, where the smell of gardenias hangs gently in the air. Where birds of paradise sit perched on every windowsill. Overtime the seeds of our minds are sown by others and like weeds they spread, infecting the flowers we once saw. You cannot un-sow the corruption of society. And people, we find out, they do die.

Our lives begin at one point on the infinity sign. We move our way around and around; no endpoint exists. I could reach the horizon with my fingertips if only I stuck out my hand. I could see with perfect clarity through the darkness of the night. I spoke my own language. Yet slowly, and all at once the figure eight unravels into a rope with a beginning and therefore, an end.

Time thwarts the outstretching arms of a child’s creativity and perverts them into paved walkways of reason. It’s a sick game we play. We have been molded into the pons of a chessboard, choosing only the strategic move to overthrow the queen without asking ourselves why we are overthrowing her in the first place. Logic consumes our minds and convinces us to take the logical approach, yet forces us to bypass the illogical, the unreasonable. As we disregard the irrational we further deny ourselves any room for exploration. We stop asking why the sky is blue; we simply accept it as a fact. Everything must have a name, a place, a reason. And people, they must die. Maturing is the slow release of viscous darkness into our porous hearts, until every artery becomes clogged. The once quick contractile movements slow to a mechanical beat, one meant only to keep us alive. However, if we learn to breath in enough open air to fill our lungs, we can free ourselves from the cages of our aging hearts. The great visionaries of science and mathematics saw no limits on the limits they could create. The great philosophers sought reason through delving deep into the unreasonable. They all saw the world through the lens of a child’s intrigue. Discovery cannot occur without the assumption that the world is extra ordinary. When they first told me that one day I would live in a world without my father and mother, I didn’t believe them. When they first told me that one day I would no longer be, I didn’t understand. And when they told me that over there, on the other side of the great big ocean, blood stains the earth and the palms of men and women, I refused to believe them. I refused to accept. We may grow to understand these statements as reality. However, that does not mean we must accept them as fact. The unnerving reality of discord in society is inevitable, yet we can still believe in a world where blood only stains the hearts of the unjust. We must see our lives through the eyes of a child. And if we can, then perhaps one day, the flowers may cease to wilt.

Subscribe

Get Teen Ink’s 48-page monthly print edition. Written by teens since 1989.